I’ve been working and creating with WordPress since its inception. The content material administration system’s simplicity is phenomenal, and its mass adoption has no shock. There are haters on the market, however I typically remind people who the problems with WordPress are normally centered across the themes and plugins applied, not the core platform.
The analogy I typically use with folks is aftermarket automotive elements… some are unbelievable, and a few can destroy your automobile. WordPress is not any completely different. A living proof that I want to share is that this website, Martech Zone. A number of years in the past, I discovered a incredible theme with all of the options and performance I needed to share my content material in a usable, stunning, and stylish consumer interface. Over time, I continued to reinforce a toddler theme that I constructed and was glad the builders of the unique mother or father theme continued to help every model of WordPress.
Till not too long ago.
A number of weeks in the past, I used to be having a problem on the positioning and couldn’t discover how the code was developed so I went over to the developer’s discussion board… and their website was down. So, I went over to Themeforest the place I bought the theme… and it was gone. I then seemed for the builders of the theme… and so they have been gone.
I used to be alone!
Many years in the past, if you purchased a product you anticipated to make use of it for all times. In at the moment’s fast-paced, low-cost expertise world, we’ve grown accustomed to tossing our expertise when it breaks or turns into out of date. That’s effective… I don’t thoughts shopping for a brand new toaster. However when it’s the software program working your web site, it’s fairly the headache. To return to my analogy, it’s much less like an aftermarket set of rims and extra like your transmission breaking. It’s a major expense, and an enormous problem within the WordPress ecosystem.
WordPress Is Nonetheless Nice
My objective with this text isn’t to complain about WordPress, it’s a versatile platform that may be up to date, transitioned, or custom-made with little or no effort. As effectively, the ecosystem of builders, themes, and plugins is past the creativeness. I’ve helped firms do some extremely revolutionary integrations and automation with the WordPress API, and I proceed to be optimistic about its future.
My objective with this text is to share, what I consider, are some vital shortcomings of the platform in order that individuals are conscious of a number of the core platform’s inherent challenges. Discover I stated core… I understand that there are themes, plugins, and headless architectures that may overcome these. I’d similar to to see WordPress architects innovate on a few of these shortcomings.
Particular to Martech Zone
I don’t have time to develop for a month, so I needed to transition the positioning to a brand new theme after which iron out the problems.
- Writer Archive – One problem that I’ve proper now’s that I’ve a whole bunch of authors so constructing an writer web page requires fairly a little bit of improvement so I can restrict the listing to anybody who has shared an article within the final month. That’s not too tough… I can develop a customized template, question the most recent posts, pull the distinctive authors, then construct an array of them, organize them alphabetically, and show their profile data.
- Customized Publish Sort – I constructed a set of acronyms for the positioning that was actually doing fairly effectively. On every of the acronym pages, I even included the most recent posts utilizing the acronym. And… it labored effectively, folks actually preferred shifting from the definition to some articles concerning the matter. Nevertheless, I needed to construct a customized archive, taxonomy archive, and single publish template for the customized publish kind to show it correctly. Now, with a brand new theme, I’ve to redevelop these.
For each, I’ve the core code. I simply should construct out the templates in my new little one theme to get them operational. It’s not tough however it’s time-consuming. WordPress has the options to develop these nevertheless it’s not that straightforward. In case you’re a enterprise – that is fairly an expense. Plainly there’s a chance for WordPress to construct accompanying (core) consumer interface choices to customized publish varieties for customizing how they’re queried and displayed. Once more, I do know there are plugins that assist… I simply suppose this is a chance for the core platform.
The brand new theme I bought and the kid theme I’ve has this limitation as effectively. All customized publish kind archives, taxonomy pages, and single customized kind posts use the default theme choices. Once more, I do know that might be a pleasant function within the theme… however I actually want this was core function. I’d love to have the ability to click on on a customized publish kind setting, choose how its queried, and choose a format choice… fairly than coding all of it.
Ten Further WordPress Challenges
Listed here are another points that I’ve run into that proceed to problem and value time and assets with my shoppers:
- Search Engine Optimization – In case you’re publishing content material for acquisition efforts in your model, product, or service, natural search optimization isn’t an choice – it’s a should. The capabilities of WordPress are woefully insufficient right here… even if you happen to’re paying for Jetpack in your website. Tag optimization, wealthy snippets, sitemaps, and different options are essential to optimizing your website for search engine customers. It’s why we gained’t implement a website with out Rankmath.
- AMP – Whereas it’s not WordPress’ fault, AMP help is horrible. Jetpack has AMP capabilities however, inexplicably, they disable shortcodes help out of your mother or father them to your AMP show. Simply as a toddler theme assumes options and performance from a mother or father theme, plainly AMP needs to be a child-type theme. One of many causes that I chosen the brand new theme I did was inherent AMP help.
- Efficiency – WordPress remains to be a canine in relation to pace as you proceed to customise it with extra plugins and theme options. After we work on our shoppers’ websites, essentially the most complicated points we sort out are website pace. If we do a deep dive, we regularly discover a whole bunch of queries and requests made for even a single web page to be displayed. I’m not an knowledgeable on this space, however I’m stunned there should not inherent database question caches and native caching on the core platform at this level. I’ve labored with different platforms that printed pages by bodily creating cached information fairly than dynamically producing them with each request.
- WooCommerce – WooCommerce was initially developed to make the most of the WordPress API, so it makes use of the core posts desk to retailer product data and treats the merchandise and classes like a customized publish kind. Merchandise aren’t posts or pages, although. Merchandise are a set of options, pricing, and variations. In case you’re popping out with a brand new model of a product and also you’re going to launch it on a sure day, it’s fairly tough to draft and publish the brand new model launch. The workaround is to create a brand new product, unpublish the outdated product, replace the brand new product’s permalink, and many others… after which, in fact, you’ve gotten a special product ID between the 2.
- Varieties and Information – It actually takes a type plugin or built-in third-party platform to handle kinds and information in your website. I’m stunned that WordPress hasn’t integrated kinds and information as a core function – particularly since WooCommerce principally makes use of each as effectively. Elementor, as an example, does a tremendous job and even has webhook capabilities that make it easy to combine.
- Spam – I used to be paying for Akismet nevertheless it was ineffective towards type spam and doesn’t appear to have developed at everywhere in the years. I nonetheless obtained a ton of spam, particularly by way of kinds on my website. The WordPress staff ought to simply kill it and purchase and combine CleanTalk which is a much better resolution with native type plugin integrations.
- Staging – Nearly each managed WordPress internet hosting now has staging versus manufacturing environments the place you’ll be able to develop and take a look at, then push your adjustments to manufacturing. We use Flywheel for this and completely find it irresistible. However staging to manufacturing has terrible limitations due to the structure of WordPress. As we develop on staging, our shoppers are sometimes nonetheless producing content material in manufacturing. Theme improvement typically ends in database edits. Because of this, we are able to’t simply push staging to manufacturing… we now have to manually push adjustments to manufacturing. If WordPress did a greater job of discreetly separating ALL content material from Themes & Plugins, it might be potential to easily have the power to push one or the opposite fairly than simply deciding on theme vs. database.
- Workflows – Nearly all of firms require the power to have content material workflows with individuals who write, edit, then approve content material earlier than it’s scheduled to go stay. Whereas WordPress has nice roles built-in, there’s no workflow administration to assign and notify these roles. Because of this, firms look externally to develop, edit, and approve the content material after which solely use WordPress to publish it.
- Content material Journeys – Newer content material expertise platforms aren’t organized by the kind of content material, they’re organized by the kind of consumer. These techniques have dynamic capabilities with rules-based or intelligence-based flows that stroll a customer by way of an expertise. That’s a dramatic change and one thing that WordPress might by no means be capable of accommodate.
- WordPress Widgets – I’m a fan of the Gutenberg editor and actually admire the flexibleness it supplies whereas supporting earlier content material architectures. Nevertheless, when WordPress determined to attempt to adapt the consumer interface for widgets to look and act like Gutenberg, it was a catastrophe. The consumer interface is terrible… and when you have a ton of widgets, it’s slowww. One of many options of my new theme was an choice to disable this interface and I used to be ecstatic.
I do know I’m going to get a ton of pushback on third-party functions, integrations, plugins, and themes. We proceed to take care of and promote our personal listing of beneficial plugins for WordPress. Once more, my level is that the options above have gotten core to a content material technique, not a function or performance outdoors of them.
Disclosure: Martech Zone is utilizing affiliate hyperlinks all through this text.
